Judge orders RIAA to justify its piracy charges — $750 for a 75 cent song is taking the Wii — A US COURT is forcing the Recording Industry of America to explain why it charges people it catches pirating $750 a single rather than the 70 cents they flog them to retailers for.

Months-old dispute over iPod finally settled — WHEATON - It's over. — A settlement in the case of a missing iPod Nano that pitted two 14-year-old girls against each other was reached Thursday in DuPage County Circuit Court, putting to rest the months-old case that made headlines locally and in the blogging world.

The Best and the Worst of the Web 2.0 Summit — If you were looking to learn something new, this week's Web 2.0 Summit was not the place to be. However, if you were planning to catch up, make contacts and swap business cards, then the Palace Hotel's grandiose hallways were where all the action was.

Marissa Mayer at Web 2.0 — Google VP Marissa Mayer just spoke at the Web 2.0 Conference and offered tidbits on what Google has learned about speed, the user experience, and user satisfaction. — Marissa started with a story about a user test they did. They asked a group of Google searchers …

social network sites: my definition — I would like to offer my working definition of "social network sites" per confusion over my request for a timeline. — A "social network site" is a category of websites with profiles, semi-persistent public commentary on the profile …

Whither magazines? — Time Magazine just made a rash of brash decisions: cutting its rate base from 4 to 3.25 million (now barely ahead of Newsweek's 3.1) by getting rid of junk circulation; raising its cover price by a buck to a rather ballsy $4.95; cutting five of its eight special demographic editions …

Wii and PS3: Complete and Synchronized Unboxing — An event that happens less than Neptune colliding with Uranus: two consoles arriving on our doorstep simultaneously. Actually now that we think about it, it's only happened once...ever. The Wii and PS3 have landed, and only Gizmodo …

Can You Tell The Difference Between 1080i And 1080p? — If you said yes, you're lying. Or maybe not. — CNET executive editor David Carnoy did a little informal testing between HDTVs of 1080p, 1080i and 720p resolutions using Blu-ray and HD DVD content. The verdict: If you've got the money to burn on the 1080p set, go for it.

Brands Produce Their Own Shows — Marketers have found a new way to try to keep viewers from tuning out: offer them TV shows, movies and online programming created by the marketers themselves, often with help from their advertising agencies. — These new offerings, the marketers hope …

Harnessing Collective Intelligence — I've long made the assertion that one of the central differences between the PC era and the Web 2.0 era is that once the internet becomes platform, rather than just an add-on to the PC, you can build applications that harness network effects, so that they become better the more people use them.

New Gmail Features — There are a couple of new Gmail features being currently rolled out: — A design change replaces the "show details" option pane with a dropdown menu at the top right, which now also includes a "Reply" button. It's interesting to see how close this button …

AGGREG8 - HOME FOR IT PROS — Okay.. you're an IT Pro. (If you're not, you're still welcome to keep reading.) And you're tired of feeling alone in the world. But you know that there must be some others out there like you - dealing with the same issues and same technologies …